Spare a thought for poor Madagascar as it votes for a new (old) president

We are just back from a great holiday in Madagascar and, while we were there, the country was gearing up for a general election on November 7th. Counting is currently underway, although this is just the start of a long, gruelling political process.

Madagascar, despite its abundant (albeit fast disappearing) eco-tourism potential and large untapped reserves of nickel, cobalt, gold, uranium and other minerals, is one of the poorest countries on earth, with 80% of its population living in poverty according to the World Bank. That poverty is readily apparent as soon as you leave the international airport, and becomes more and more marked the further from the capital you travel.

The country also has a sorry history of poor leadership, most recently exemplified by the 2009 coup led by Andry Rajoelina, which resulted in most of the world withdrawing its investment from Madagascar, although it has started trickling back in slowly since Rajoelina was elected out, more or less democratically, in 2013.

Perhaps surprisingly, given this history, Rajoelina is probably the front-runner in the current election. The other two main candidates, out of a jaw-dropping total of 36 presidential candidates, are Marc Ravalomanana, who was the man in power before Rajoelina's coup, and the current incumbent, who glories in the name of Hery Rajaonarimampianina. So, one of three failed ex-Presidents, all of whom have faced convincing allegations of corruption and self-enrichment while in office, will almost certainly be given a second chance. Apparently, no "anomalies" have been detected by the EU observer mission during the election process, although there have been widespread reports of names mysteriously missing from voter lists. Such allegations of fraud and corruption are regular accompaniments to Madagascan elections.

It's such a shame for a country which desperately needs some strong, steady and progressive leadership to raise it it out of its morass of poverty and environmental degradation. We experienced the slash-and-burn style of agriculture at first hand, and the poor denuded landscape is a living (dying?) testament to the extent to which necessity has driven poor farmers to destroy the island's inestimable natural and zoological wealth for the sake of a few short years of crop growing.

If there is no outright winner in the initial poll - and there almost certainly will not be - the top two candidates, probably Rajoelina and Ravalomanana, will face off again in a second election on November 19th. Whoever ultimately prevails, though, don't expect any great changes to the plight of the poor people of Madagascar. And if you want to see lemurs, chameleons and tenrecs in their natural habitat, I recommend you go sooner rather than later, while they are still there.

Why traffic jams happen and how to stop them happening

An article about the right way for cars to merge lanes on a busy highway has reminded me of another (video) article I saw recently which tried to make sense of some of the apparently inexplicable phenomena we regularly experience in traffic.

The article in today's Globe focuses specifically on the thorny issue of merging lanes, for example when joining at an intersection or when encountering construction blockages. Whatever you may feel about it, the science most definitely and definitively concludes that "late merging" or "zipper merging" is the way to go. If done properly, it can be up to 40% more efficient to go the the end of the lane and seamlessly merge by alternating one by one, with as little braking as possible on both sides, rather than trying to merge early and holding up people behind you. The sting, though, is in that phrase "if done properly": it relies on vehicles in the continuing lane letting people in, on the joining vehicles not peremptorily pushing their way in and causing everyone else to brake, and on people not doing crazy things like haring off down the hard shoulder or moving out of a continuing lane to a merging lane in order to get a few vehicles length ahead (and yes, this kind of thing is increasingly common, at least around Toronto).

The YouTube piece I was referring to is an episode of Hank Green's SciShow called "Why is it so hard to fix traffic?" I confess that I find Mr. Green's style intensely annoying (my 23-year old daughter loves him, so maybe it's a millennial thing?), but his shows are often interesting and always well-researched and explained.

In addition to confirming the wisdom of zipper merging as examined above, the video explains (using fluid dynamics and the simple analogy a bag of rocks) that it is possible for a traffic jam to occur purely due to the sheer number of cars on a road, without the need for any bad behaviour or poor driving skills. It also shows why building new roads or adding lanes does not necessarily help traffic flow, and can even make it worse (a phenomenon known as Braess' Paradox). Conversely, completely removing some busy roads has been shown to actually improve traffic flow, as the examples of Seoul and San Francisco have demonstrated.

The video also explains the theory of "traffic waves", which is so often the reason for those inexplicable slowdowns which appear to have absolutely no visible cause. When aggressive drivers weave in and out of traffic, or force themselves into inadequate gaps, the cars behind them have to brake for safety, leading the cars still further behind to brake even more. Ultimately, on a busy road, some cars way further back in the line will be forced to come to a complete stop, all due to some idiot a long way ahead who just couldn't rein in his patience (and yes, I use the masculine pronoun advisedly). Then, as people move out of the jammed lane to avoid the hold-up, they cause the same thing go happen in the adjoining lane too, until there is a full-blown traffic jam in all lanes for no apparent reason (the actual reason being that thoughtless yahoo in the Beemer a few minutes ago).

Of course, the obvious solution to this problem is to leave more space between cars so that there is time and space to brake if needed without affecting others behind. This solution does not seem to have occurred to Canadian drivers, and whenever I leave plenty of space in front of me (which I always try to do) it usually gets filled in repeatedly by others, who seem to abhor a vacuum... Interestingly, studies also show that leaving more space in city diving can speed up your

journey because, although you may be a little further away from that traffic light.that is about to change, you can actually start accelerating again earlier than a car that is jammed up against the vehicle in front, and you certainly use much less fuel that way (up to 20%).

So, come on guys, give everyone a break and leave more space - tailgating helps no-one not even the tailgaters. And stop it already with that aggressive ducking and weaving - you may get home twenty seconds earlier, but everone else is still stuck in that traffic jam you created.

How can the USA force other countries to impose sanction on Iran?

I have been trying (and failing) to get my head around exactly how the US's sanctions against Iran actually work. The New York Times has produced a detailed explanation of the US sanctions, but I still don't understand how the US can directly influence trade between Iran and other countries.

I understand the concept of sanctions: one country refuses to buy products from another in order to inflict economic pain on it, and thereby facilitate whatever political ends it hopes to achieve. But how can one country, like the USA, force other countries to impose sanctions? And how can it give certain countries waivers on those sanctions, as the USA appears to have given eight major importers of Iranian oil: China, India, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, Greece, Japan and Taiwan (yes, Taiwan, which those USA does not even recognize as a country, hence their careful use of the word "jurisdiction" and not "country")?

Well, it turns out (thank you BBC) that the way it works is that the US will prohibit any foreign company that trades with Iran from also doing business in the United States. In fact, there are also secondary sanctions whereby any US company that does business with a company found trading with Iran faces punishment itself. Given that most other countries disagree with the American move, seeing more likelihood of political success through the previously-struck nuclear agreement that Donald Trump has rejected so vehemently, and given that Iran itelf has rejected the sanctions out of hand and vowed to "break" them, this last provision puts a heavy burden of due diligence on all American companies doing business with pretty much anybody from anywhere. It all sounds totally impractical to me, as well as almost impossible to police.
China, Iran's largest customer, has already shown that it is is willing to subvert the system, by availing itself of a much more unofficial (read secretive) trading system, although Trump has graciously given it a pass from the current sanctions anyway. Even if the Americans succeed in barring Iran from the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) financial system, as it did in 2012, China has shown that it is willing to pay in cash or even barter to overcome such a hurdle.

So, it is far from clear how effective American sanctions will be, and how far they can force others to toe their line. At this rate, though, the USA is going to be reduced to trading with itself...

Supreme Court rules definitively against Newfoundland in Churchill Falls case

For the third (and final) time, the courts have ruled against the province of Newfoundland and Labrador and in favour of Hydro-Québec in the long-simmering dispute over Churchill Falls hydroelectric plant.

Way back in 1969, Hydro-Québec entered into an agreement with the perennial have-not province Newfoundland and Labrador, under which the electricity utility agreed to assume the substantial risks of the huge Churchill Falls hydroelectricity project, and to finance any cost overruns. Essentially, the Quebec utility made the whole thing possible, as it would have foundered without their intervention. In return, Newfoundland allowed Hydro-Québec to buy the Hydro station's electricity at 1969 prices until 2041, and to sell it off to whoever it likes at whatever the market rate happens to be.

Given the surge in electricity prices since then, Hydro-Québec has made out like bandits from the deal, to the tune of an estimated $26 billion. When the contract expires in 2041, Newfoundland and Labrador will finally be able to reap the profits of the plant until its eventual demise, but in the meantime, the province is hurting financially and is desperate to prove in court that the 1969 deal was unfair and should be annulled. Every time, though, the courts have ruled against it, arguing that the deal was struck between competent businessmen, and if the Newfoundland negotiating team ended up with a bad deal, then that was their own problem.

This latest ruling - by a margin of 7-1, with only a Newfoundland judge dissenting - was by the Supreme Court of Canada, and Newfoundland now has nowhere to go and must accept the consequences (and wait for 2041!). It is time to stop kvetching, suck it up, and put it behind them.

Marco Rubio is a birthright citizen and now he wants to abandon that right

Donald Trump wants to cancel the automatic right for babies born on America soil to be granted US citizenship (so-called "birthright citizenship"). And this comes as no surprise to most people, as Trump looks into every possible avenue to reduce immigration and to make the lives of immigrants as difficult as possible.
Currently, that right is enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, and most legal scholars do not think that Trump will be able to just repeal that right by a presidential decree. A similar right also exists in Canada and many other countries, even though Trump seems to think that America is alone in allowing such ridiculous scam. Some Republicans are arguing that the 14th Amendment does not apply to the children of illegal or temporary immigrants, but that too seems unlikely to stand up in a court of law.
What is perhaps more interesting is that Trump's plan is backed by Senator Marco Rubio. Why this is unexpected is because Rubio is himself a US citizen by virtue of this very right. Rubio's parents immigrated to the USA from Cuba in 1956 (and NOT in response to Castro's revolution in 1959, as Rubio has often claimed). Although they became naturalized American citizens in 1975, Rubio himself was born in 1971, i.e. at a time when his parents were undocumented and illegal immigrants. So, Marco Rubio owes his very existence as a US citizen to this right that he now wants to cancel.
Ironic? Just a tad.

Why some people think women are inferior, and why they are wrong

I have been reading Angela Saini's new book, Inferior: How science got women wrong and the new research that's rewriting the story. It looks at all manner of preconceptions, received wisdom and scientific research around the general intersection of gender and science, from intelligence to emotion to behaviour to gender identity to education. It throws new light on old saws like "men are naturally more intelligent than women", "men's brains are bigger than women's", "men are analytical and women are empathetic", "nature is more important than nurture",  "men are promiscuous and undiscriminating, women are choosy and chaste", "the vast majority of science professors are male", etc.
En route, it throws up a bunch of interesting factoids:

• Married mothers of young children in the USA are about a third less likely to get tenure-track academic jobs than married fathers of young children. BUT ... unmarried childless women are actually 4% MORE likely to get those jobs than unmarried childless men.
• Although they typically get sicker more often, women are biologically better survivors than men, from their survival rates in childbirth early childhood (at least where equal healthcare is provided) to their significant advantage in longevity, and one reason may be their stronger autoimmune system, which in turn may be due to their need to host and nurture a foreign body during pregnancy and childbirth, and also the doubling up of many genes from the female XX chromosomes (as opposed the more heterogeneous male XY chromosomes).
• Only a small minority (around one in five) of pharmacology and physiology studies look at both genders, with about eight out of ten showing a male bias, despite increasing evidence that women's bodies, and particularly their hormones, often reacts differently to drugs and treatments.
• Although there is no statistical difference between the genders in "general intelligence (a measure taking into account intelligence, cognitive ability and mental ability), there is statistically more variability among men, meaning more men of extremely high intelligence and - to a much greater extent - more men of extremely low intelligence.
• The male propensity for traditionally male pursuits like sports, cars, construction, etc, may not be innate, but merely a function of the amount of stereotyped reinforcement at an early age from well-meaning and unaware parents.
• For decades it was maintained that, because women's brains were, on average, about five ounces lighter than the average man's (42ozs or 1,198g, as compared to 47ozs or 1,336g), women were that much less intelligent. It was only when it was revealed that the (male) founder of the Cornell Brain Collection himself had a brain about the size of the average woman, that it was admitted that brain weight and volume is actually proportionate to the size of the person, thus also explaining that elephants (which have brains weighing about 11lbs or 5kgs) are not more intelligent than humans.
• Desperate to find other physiological differences between male and female brains, other researchers have turned to: the fact that women's brains have 15-20% higher blood flow than men's; that women have a higher percentage of grey matter in their brains, while man have more white matter or connective tissues; that men have more connections within the hemispheres, while women have more connections between the hemispheres; etc, etc. But other studies have shown how hard (or rather easy but unjustifiable)  it is to draw sweeping conclusions from the even most detailed brain scans, and the academic pressure to publish something eye-catching on a hot-button topic.
• There is good evidence that biology and society are inextricably "entangled". For example, studies from the 1970s and 1980s showed that exceptional male mathematicians outnumbered females by as much as thirteen to one; more recent studies show this imbalance to be closer to four, three or even two to one, suggesting that this is not due to biological differences but to sociological and cultural differences that can change over time.
• "Mate guarding" - forcing a female to be sexually subservient and monogamous, even to the detriment of the species or group or the physical wellbeing of the female - is a common behaviour among many animals. The human equivalent can be seen in practices like female genital mutilation, breast ironing, foot binding, the use of menstrual huts, etc.

Ms. Saini's conclusion is that the physical sex differences in the brain (as well as behavioural and psychological differences) are actually minimal, and mainly a function of the relative sizes of men and women (and consequently of their brains). Those differences that have been shown in various studies over the decades are overblown, exaggerated or misinterpreted, often the result of over-zealous researchers on a mission to make their names as pioneers of the theory of sexual dimorophism of the brain (the names Ruben Gur and Simon Baron-Cohen come up regularly in this context). Ms. Saini (often based on the work of others before her) skewers study after revered study, pointing out inconsistencies, errors and bias.
There is, however, still a vocal and influential (and mainly male) movement that insists that the differences are real and significant. Tempers can become very hot in this contentious area of neuroscience, and there are reports of offensive, even threatening, emails making the rounds. New words like "neurosexism" and "neurofeminism" have been coined. New research in the area gets covered in major national newspapers, unlike most scientific studies, because it is seen as subject that many people are very interested in and touches us closely (we all have brains, we all have genders, we all have sons or daughters or fathers or mothers).
The jury, as they say, is still out. But, you have to ask, is it important? What is the justification for all this research? And, for that matter, who is paying for it?

What if we had invested in wind instead of the oil sands?

An interesting infographic in The Guardian gives a graphic analysis what might have been if Canada had spent the $200 billion it has invested in the Alberta oil sands since 1999 on windpower projects instead:

• Almost twice as many electric cars could have been powered, compared to traditional ICE cars using the gasoline produced in the oil sands.
• There would have been zero CO2 emissions from the operation of those vehicles, and zero emissions from the actual energy production, compared to 325 million tons and 66 million tons respectively from the use and production of energy from the oil sands.
• The operations costs of the oil sands has been over 4 times what windpower would have cost.
• The fuel cost for drivers of traditional gas-powered vehicles has been over 14 times as much as the cost of running electric cars powered by the wind.

It's kind of a sensationalistic, impractical and rather hokey comparison, but food for thought nevertheless.

Armenia is part of La Francophonie? Why?

I can't get too excited by the news that Canadian Michaëlle Jean lost her bid to be re-elected as head of the Organisation Internationale de La Francophonie, the organization of French-speaking nations.
That honour, if such it be, went to Louise Mushikiwabo of Rwanda, who seemed to be the consensus candidate, despite the fact that Rwanda recently made English, and not French, as the country's official language and the language of reference for its education system. Yes, Rwanda has its problems, principally its long-time autocratic president Paul Kagame and his tendency to flout democratic rights and press freedoms. But Jean's last 4 years at La Francophonie have been far from controversial, what with her rather high-handed ways, and leadership of the organization tends to be something of an African fiefdom (the bulk of its 54 full voting states regions are in Africa).
What particularly surprised me, though, was the fact that the vote was taking place in Yerevan, Armenia. Armenia? French-speaking? A quick perusal of Armenia's Wikipedia page reveals the official language of Armenia to be ... Armenian, and the only other languages widely spoken by Armenians are Russian and English. And yet, (Wikipedia again) Armenia is in fact a paid-up member of La Francophonie, as indeed are several other unlikely countries such as Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Moldova, Egypt, Qatar and Vanuatu, none if which have French as an official language.
Also in today's news, Saudi Arabia was applying to join the organization,(yup, no French connection there either), an application that was only refused for that country's unfortunate tendency to assassinate dissident journalists, and nothing to do with the fact that they don't speak French. They were only applying for "observer status", but still..
So, what is the requirement for joining La Francophonie? Do they just take any old country that happens to apply? Well, supposedly it represents countries.or regions where French is the lingua franca (no ounce intended), where a significant proportion of the population are French-speaking, or where there is a notable affiliation with French culture. This last item is a particularly vague and woolly one, but even so, where do Armenia and Saudi Arabia fit into this? Probably the best Armenia can offer in its defence is that there is apparently a thriving Armenian diaspora living in France (as there is in several other countries), and, we are assured, French is taught in Armenian public schools (along with other languages).
I'm clearly not the first to wonder at the organization's membership policy. It is a strange beast, to be sure. To take another example, get this: Algeria, with one of the largest French-speaking populations in the world, is conspicuously absent from the membership list (but then France and Algeria don't exactly get along, and have some pretty bad history).
It's all a bit of a mystery.